Eyes Relax Reminds You to Take a Break

Eyes Relax is a utility that will remind you periodically to get up, take a break, and look at something other than a computer screen for a while.

You know the feeling: you've been sitting at your desk for a few hours now, staring at your computer screen, and you can feel the familiar pain behind your eyes that lets you know you've been in front of the computer far too long. However, by the time you have a headache it's probably too late. Your last resort is some time away from the computer or, more likely, painkillers. Eyes Relax can help you head off that pain before it happens; the app reminds you to take periodic breaks, get up, walk around, and reduce strain on your eyes.

Not everyone can sit in front of a glowing display for hours doing the same thing over and over without straining their eyes or winding up with a headache. Most of us have to at least look at something different for a while, or get up and move around. Unfortunately, when you're in the office and you're knee-deep in work you may not always remember to get up and move around every so often.

Eyes Relax is a utility that will remind you periodically to get up, take a break, and look at something other than a computer screen for a while. Simply tell Eyes Relax how long you want to work between breaks, and the app stays silent and out of the way until break time. When it is time for a break, the app will display a balloon alert reminding you to take a break. You can also tell Eyes Relax to pop-up a selected image when your breaks are set to begin, or blank out your screen so you can't ignore it.

You can also set how long your breaks are, so if you're interested in reminding yourself to take a 15-minute break to get some water or at least look somewhere other than the computer screen, you can tell Eyes Relax to keep your screen blank for 15 minutes. When time is up, the app will let you get back to work. You can customize the length of your breaks and of your work periods between the breaks from the system tray.

If your break time comes up while you're on a conference call, about to run to a meeting, or otherwise doing something important, you can tell Eyes Relax to suspend alerts by double-clicking its system tray icon. Once you've silenced the app, it won't alert you again until you re-enable it. Eyes Relax also allows you to set up multiple profiles, so if you share a computer with someone else or if you want to set breaks at one frequency during the day and another during the evening, you can.

Similarly, the app also has a "parent mode," where you can protect the alerts so they can't be disabled without a password. The developer suggests you use this to remind your kids not to spend too much time at the computer, but I can see this as being one more method to not just ignore the alerts or silence them, but to actually force yourself to get up and move around.